(Toronto Sun-Canada) Sue-Ann Levy - Yahya Mohamid, 20, from Umm el-Fahm in Israel, calls himself a Muslim Zionist. He says the Islamic movement has controlled his hometown for 30 years. On TV, in the streets and at school, he was fed a steady diet of anti-Israeli rhetoric. "Demonization (of Israel) is a big thing....We get little to no lessons about the Jewish connection to the land or what the Nazis did," he recalls. His whole world "flipped upside down" when he got a job at age 17 as a busboy in a hotel in Tel Aviv, a one-hour drive from his town. When he started interacting with Jewish people at the hotel, "I realized there were two sides to this....It's not black and white. It was an eye-opener." In June 2014, when three Israeli teens were abducted in the West Bank, Mohamid joined the campaign to bring them back, posing with an Israeli flag on Facebook. He says, "all hell broke loose" in his town and he was subjected to numerous death threats. He insisted on staying in town and that "another voice was needed." But six months ago someone planted bombs close to his vehicle and the police told him it was time to leave.
2017-10-27 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive